years of moral
discretion.

He was still so timid at the beginning of the wonderful journey that
when the kind old gentleman who drove the stage stopped his horses at a
point on the road where ripe red apples hung thickly on a tree, climbed
the fence and returned with a capacious hat full of the fruit, he was
chilled with horror at the crime. He had been freely told what was
thought of people, and what was done with them, who took things not
their own. Afraid to decline the two apples proffered by the robber, who
resumed his seat and ate brazenly of his loot, the solitary passenger
would still be no party to the outrage. He presently dropped his own two
apples over the back of the stage, and later, lacking the preacher's
courage, averred that he had eaten them--and couldn't eat another one,
thank you. He was not a little affected by the fine bravado with which
the old man ate apple after apple along miles of the road, full in the
gaze of passersby, to whom he nodded in open-faced greeting, as might an
honest man; but he was disappointed that there was no quick dragging to
a jail, nor smiting by the hand of God, which quite as often occurred,
if his mother and the minister knew anything about such matters. He
decided that at least the elderly reprobate would wake up in the dark
that very night and cry out in mortal agony under the realization of his
sin.

And yet he, the unsullied, the fine theoretical moralist, was to return
along that road a thief. A thief of parts, of depraved daring.

"Gramper" and "Grammer" proved to be an incredibly old couple, brown and
withered and gray of locks, shrunken in stature, slow and feeble in
action, and even rather timid themselves in their greetings. They made
much of this grandchild, but they were diffident. Slowly it came to his
knowledge that he was set up as a creature to adore. He enjoyed a
blissful new sensation of being deferred to. Thereafter he lorded it
over them, speaking in confident tones and making wild demands of
entertainment. His mother had been right. They were Beans and,
therefore, not much. He had brought his own silver napkin-ring and had
meant to show them how wonderfully he folded and rolled his napkin after
each meal. But it seemed they possessed no napkins whatever. Even his
mother hadn't thought anything so repulsive as that of these people. He
now boldly played the new game at table that his mother had frowned on.
This was to measure off your meat and po